Battle of ʿAin Jālūt

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Battle of ʿAin Jālūt
Part of: Mongol Storm
Troop movements of the warring parties
Troop movements of the warring parties
date September 3, 1260
place ʿAin Jalut Coordinates: 32 ° 33 ′ 37 ″  N , 35 ° 23 ′ 27 ″  EWorld icon
output Victory of the Mamluks
Parties to the conflict

Mamluks (Sultanate of Egypt)
Ayyubids (Emirate of Kerak)

Mongols ( Ilkhan )

Commander

Qutuz
Baibars

Kitbukha †

Troop strength
10,000-12,000 men 10,000-12,000 men
losses

unknown

high

The Battle of ʿAin Jālūt ( Arabic معركة عين جالوت, DMG Maʿrakat ʿAin Ǧālūt  'Battle of the Goliaths Spring ', the place is also written Ayn Djalut in English ), took place on September 3, 1260 between the Mamluks of Egypt and the Mongols in Palestine , northwest of Mount Gilboa , in the area of present-day En Harod . It ended with a decisive victory for the Mamluks. This was the first military defeat the Mongol Empire suffered.

prehistory

The Mongols under Hülegü Ilchan had conquered and destroyed Baghdad in 1258 . In 1260 he sent ambassadors to Sultan Saif ad-Din Qutuz in Cairo , demanding his submission. Qutuz had the ambassadors executed and was now preparing for the Mongol invasion. While Hülegü was advancing into Syria , he received news of the death of the great Khan , his brother Möngke Khan . Since the question of the succession was unresolved, Hülegü returned to Mongolia with a large part of his army. He placed the Mongolian troops remaining in Syria under the command of his deputy Kitbukha .

The Mongols tried to ally themselves with the remaining crusader states , which was forbidden by Pope Alexander IV . Prince Bohemond VI. of Antioch and Tripoli allied themselves with the Mongols and was excommunicated for it in early 1260. The Kingdom of Jerusalem preferred the side of the Mamluks, but tried to remain as neutral as possible. The kingdom rejected Qutuz 'alliance offers, but allowed him free passage through its lands.

In July / August 1260, Qutuz advanced with his army via Gaza along the coast of Palestine to the gates of Acre . He had reinforced his Egyptian army with a cavalry unit made up of Khwarezmiyya ( Khwarezmiyya ), and he was accompanied by a contingent of the Ayyubid emir of Kerak , with whom he had allied himself. Since Hülegü had taken a large part of his troops with him to Mongolia, the Mongolian army remaining in Syria was outnumbered or at most as strong as that of the Mamluks. The Mongol army also included auxiliary troops from the Georgians , Armenians , Rumeljuk and Ayyubid Syrians who had been forced into Mongolian dependency . The size of the two armies is estimated at 10,000 to 12,000 men each.

While Qutuz was in Acre he received news that Kitbukha had crossed the Jordan and was entering Galilee . He immediately led his army to the southeast via Nazareth and reached Ain Jalut on September 2, 1260, in the area of ​​today's En Harod . The next morning they met the Mongolian army.

Course of the battle

Kitbukha had apparently not adequately explored the area with scouts and scouts. In any case, he did not know that the entire Mamluk army was in close proximity. Qutuz, however, was aware of the size of his opponents' army and lured them into an ambush . He hid his main forces in the nearby hill country and only revealed his vanguard under Baibars to the gaze of his enemies. After a few skirmishes, Baibars feigned a hasty retreat. Kitbukha fell into the trap, hotly pursued him, and suddenly the whole Mongolian army saw itself surrounded. The Mongols fought with great doggedness, so that Baibars was almost unable to withstand their attack. When the Mamluks began to totter, Qutuz threw himself into battle to inspire them again. After a few hours, the Mamluks finally got the upper hand. The Mongols were put to flight, Kitbukha was captured and beheaded. The Mameluks' heavy cavalry had defeated the Mongols in hand-to-hand combat, something no one had before done.

consequences

As a result of the battle, the Mamluks drove the Mongols out of Syria again. Five days after the battle, Qutuz entered Damascus . After conquering Homs and Hama , he reinstated their former Ayyubid emirs there. Within a month he also conquered Aleppo . On the way back to Cairo , Qutuz was murdered in the delta region of the Nile by Baibars, who then campaigned himself as Sultan of the Mamluks.

The battle at the source site ʿAin Jalut was repeatedly assigned "world historical" importance, as it stopped the Mongolian expansion to the west and represented a turning point in the Mongolian warfare . For the first time, the Mongols had been decisively defeated - in previous defeats they had always won in a second confrontation, this was different for the first time. For the contemporaries, this view of later generations was by no means so clear, because the Mongol threat to Syria and Egypt was far from over. Even if Hülegü himself never succeeded in penetrating as far as Egypt, the Ilchanat he founded in Persia continued to lay claim to the lands ruled by the Mamluks, and his rulers undertook five large-scale, but ultimately futile, campaigns by 1313 to conquer them. “ ʿAyn Jalut only became a decisive battle when it became clear that the Mongols could never gain a permanent foothold west of the Euphrates . "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See John Masson Smith: 'Ayn Jalut, Battle of. In: Robert Cowley / Geoffrey Parker: The Reader's Companion to Military History. Houghton Mifflin, 2001, ISBN 978-0-618-12742-9 . P. 44.
  2. ↑ See Reuven Amitai Prize : Mongols and Mamluks. The Mamluk-Īlkhānid War. 1260-1281. Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-46226-6 . P. 37 ff.
  3. ↑ Schulze (2004), p. 106.